Bloody Mist
by The . L O S T . Paperclip
Summary: Graduation is a major turning point in any ninja's life, but the Mist Village used to do things very differently. Blood coats the air around you and being merciful is for the weak; those that snap are the lucky ones. They survive.


_This has been sitting on my computer for a while, and I looked upon it and sighed at the wonderful memories it brings. I always love blood. So anyway, I decided to edit and post it! Like I said; Don't like gore, then don't read it. Unless I said it in my mind, and that is the first time you've heard it . . . In which case, just pay attention. To what, I have forgotten already. But I'm assuming I knew what I was talking about when I wrote that, so I won't question it._

_. . . Sorry about that. This is just a little slice of death that was tugging at the back of my mind . . ._

**Bloody Mist**

So here I am. Finally.

I know I can do this. This is my time. There is no way I can lose.

. . . Momma said so.

I remember . . . She woke up crying this morning. She held me close, and I could feel her tears in my hair. She's scared for me. I know I'm ready, but she thinks it's too soon. If I let her have her way, she would have pulled me out of the academy years ago. She doesn't want to let me go. But she doesn't understand.

Unlike my big brother, I'm not going anywhere.

I squint my eyes. _A_ big brother. He's not mine any more. He upped it years ago and is now six feet under, with the countless others that failed to graduate. He was weak. He lacked determination. He lacked resolve. He couldn't even kill his girlfriend, and the bitch ripped his throat out with her teeth. She had been cornered and unarmed, and his success was definite. But instead of killing her, he kissed her. And she came out of it with a chunk of his flesh between her teeth.

The way the crowd cheered makes me sick with excitement. I mean, I am a little sad that he was killed. He was a nice big brother.

But now it's my turn, and I know that failure is not an option. I know I can kill whomever I am faced with.

I close my eyes and breathe deeply, the muggy haze of fog coating my throat and nostrils like syrup. I let it soak my skin to the bone. It's something you get used to; the constant dampness of everything. It's something I thrive off. I love the wet and the cold.

I step languidly onto the field. It was made into an outdoor arena, its soil is drenched in blood of the fallen. Blood of children that just weren't strong enough. Children that didn't deserve to become ninjas. It is survival of the fittest, and only the strongest are allowed to live. There's a reason the Mist has a notoriously strong army, you know. And I will become the strongest yet.

I know I can do this.

The supervising ninja introduces us over a loudspeaker – my opponent and I – to the deathly silent audience. They're all waiting in anticipation for young blood to be shed. We are instructed to shake hands, and we do so stiffly. Stepping back, I realise that the ground is soft and sloshy with mud from the recent rain. Crap. Along with the thick mist, that'll make fighting much harder. I can't even see my opponent clearly.

A noise rings in my ears, and I realise with a slight shock that it was the bell that signalled the battle to begin.

My feet slap the ground as I run towards the silhouette of my opponent. I dare not think that he has a name, a family. A life. He is a mere obstacle that I must overcome, and I will kill him before he knows what hit him.

It only takes a second; I realise that he would not be as stupid as to stand in the middle of the field, open to an attack. Stumbling slightly, I find myself face to face with an immobile clone. Suddenly I am hyper-aware of my surroundings, and I find that, to my horror, my feet are frozen to the muddy ground. Fear builds in my chest as my heart beats painfully against my ribcage.

I can't see him. I have no idea where he is. I start to panic.

I order myself to stop and breathe. My pulse is still screaming in my ears, but I tune it out as best I can. I take a deep, tense breath and realise that it's difficult – fear has constricted my chest already.

But there's nothing to fear! I can beat this lowlife! I can–

Everything in a matter of seconds, but it feels like an eternity. And finally, _finally_, my rational mind crushes my fear like a bug under a boot and I whip out a couple of shuriken. Throwing them into the fog, I must look like an idiot. Wasting weapons like that.

But my plan worked. From the thick shroud my enemy appears, having easily dodged the weapons, brandishing a blade bigger than he was and a crazed grin. And I snap the trap. I grip the wires, invisible in the mist, and pull my shuriken back towards me. They slice through the air and, with a flick of my wrist, come towards his neck from each side. Inescapable.

But I hear something behind me. In an instant my stomach drops to my toes, leaving a warm, sick feeling of dread in its place. I dart away, but then the dread escalates into a searing pain in my back.

The shuriken sliced through his neck all right; blood was everywhere for a fraction of a second. Now it disappears in a poof of smoke. I duck under my weapons and whip them behind me, towards the real enemy. The one that _wasn't_ a clone after all. He ducks behind his blade, rendering them useless, and swipes at me with that horrible, _horrible _blade. Somehow, a split-second before the pain becomes debilitating, I manage to dodge it and use the steel as a lever to push myself into the air. And determine, in the process, that this is indeed my real enemy.

The clone I had attacked didn't stir the mist at all. And I had realised, too late, that the clone behind me wasn't really a clone – just standing too still to be lifelike. Not even breathing. It must have taken a lot of hard disciplinary training to stay that still. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, battling futilely against the pain. My back is in pain. Too much pain. It stings and burns, and I see that on his sword there is a thin line of my own blood.

Terror courses through me at that moment; ice runs painfully through my veins. The sight of my own blood just made it too real. I can't position myself to land properly.

Falling is more painful than I could have imagined. Agony ripped from my feet to my back and into my head and momentum pushes me forward, onto my face. The breath is knocked out of me as I hit the ground again and again, rolling more than is physically healthy, and I can't move, can't breathe. The pain is immense. It's already making me sick enough to puke. I wince and try to get up, to keep moving, but I fall to my hands and knees and begin crawling pathetically, tiny whimpers escaping my lips as warm blood trickles down my back. It's only a shallow wound on the scale of things, and I understand that, but it hurts nonetheless. Stings.

And then he is above me, my enemy, and I barely manage to roll away as his sword is lodged in the mud where my head was a second ago. The mud in my wound makes it sting all the more, and I cry out against my will.

I'm scared. Terrified. I don't want to die. My eyes feel hot and clammy. My vision is blurred from fog and . . . tears.

I'm crying, damn it all! Come on, the pain isn't that bad! _Suck it up, DAMMIT! GET UP!_

Gritting my teeth, I roll into my feet and begin making hand seals. But there is no time to complete the combination as my enemy dives at me. Our eyes lock. And for a second I see something in the eyes of my enemy that I never wanted to see. Something that could break me.

_Remorse._ This boy, the freak with the blue skin, doesn't want to kill me. He wishes there were another way out of this.

And, with great horror, I realise that I do, too. I don't want to kill . . . and I don't want to die. I really don't want it to end like this.

But I shove that thought away. _What the HELL am I thinking? I've worked for this my whole life, _I remind myself harshly. _This has to be done. He is nothing but an obstacle. Kill him, already!_

I have to win. I need to live.

I whip out a kunai and tense for a block, the huge-ass blade inches from my face, when he disappears in a puff of smoke. Only when I am unable to speak do I realise that the attack had no weight to it at all.

And that is when I truly realise that he is so much faster than I am. But it's too late now.

Waves of agony rip up my arm, through my shoulder and into my head. It hurts, _oh god_, it hurts so bad. I want it to stop. I want the pain to stop. I clutch the wound with my other hand, only to feel my dread deepen horribly. A blinding, sickening terror fills me. I feel like I'm dying . . .

. . . But then again, I probably am.

I scream silently as I realise that I don't _have_ an arm any more. That means no jutsu; no special attacks. I am forced to my knees as his foot is placed on my back, sole arm held behind me, like a criminal waiting for a death sentence to be carried out. Blood is gushing from the stump where my right arm used to be, and I begin to feel faint. My vision is fading from the edges, slowly but surely.

My tears make tracks in the mud that is caked on my face. Fire is eating me alive. I know I'm dying. I know there is no way I can win this.

But I don't want to die!

I don't want to die . . .

I . . . I don't-

I can feel myself trying to say something. Probably exactly what I'm thinking. I know my lips are moving, stuttering and screaming and crying, but I can hear nothing. It's like all the sound has been drained from the world.

The pain doubles, and I begin screaming and pleading all over again. Suddenly my enemy lets me go. He just drops me. Just like that . . . No. I know that he still has part of me. My other arm. Holding it to the crowd like a trophy. My face is in the mud, and I cough up mucus. I try to move. Try to crawl away from my death. I only succeed in looking pathetic, as now I cannot move an inch. His foot is planted firmly on my back.

I'm going to die. He's going to kill me.

I'm no better than my brother was.

I'm coughing and crying. Choked screams periodically rip through my clenched teeth; uneven, pleading sounds that make no sense to me. Nothing makes sense. Nothing but the pain and the fear. I know he is going to cut me in half now. He will bring that demon of a sword down upon my soft, vulnerable self, and I will die.

Sobbing harder, I twist and turn in the mud and plead with him. I try to ask him not to kill me. I try to tell him that I don't want to die. But all that comes out is incomprehensible blubbering and screams.

Eventually I get tired. It could have been seconds, but it feels like I've been dying for hours.

The weight leaves my back, and I no longer have the strength to move. I just cry into the mud. I wonder vaguely why he left, and I can hear someone else asking the same question. My head is spinning too fast for me to hear the answer properly.

A distant sigh. "She'll die in a few minutes at most. Not much blood left in her."

"You cannot leave the arena until your opponent is _dead_, Kisame." Probably his teacher, scolding him yet again for leaving something unfinished.

"Hmph."

And he sits down next to me.

I'm losing consciousness, but I can see that he's waving a hand in my face. I'm in too much pain to ask why he doesn't just kill me.

He's saying many things I can't understand, with resentful undertones I can barely detect. And, somehow, I can tell he is not talking to the audience. It's things that they shouldn't hear. His tone . . . The blue freak sounds like he really _is_ sorry, but not for me personally. He mentions my family. He talks about the Mizukage . . . and plans to stop this . . . Things that don't make much sense, and things I couldn't care less about . . .

But the sound of his voice is . . . nice. It helps me sleep through the pain.

The shudders that rack my body lessen, and I feel myself getting distant. I can't remember my name. I don't know what happened any more. I just know that the pain is fading . . .

Another sigh. The boy says that this is taking too long.

I feel a cold hand on my neck then, and with a sharp _crack _that I can't be sure I can hear, I am swallowed by oblivion.

-X-

_It wasn't meant to be so long – I wanted to end it with the horrible screams of agony. But I don't know what happened to that idea. And it wasn't even supposed to be Kisame at first, but that idea went out the window as well . . . Meh. I'm not going to deny my brain its fun. Kisame graduated at age ten, if you were wondering why he was so damn compassionate after dismembering the poor unnamed OC. First time he'd killed someone, I'm guessing. And he was talking about his plans and plots to assassinate the Mizukage. I'll leave the rest to your imaginations :P_

_I may turn this into a Bloody Mist miniseries if you ask nicely. That could include the Mizukage's perspective on things, Zabuza's killings, and a bunch of other perspectives on death. You like? No? Well, I'll probably be too lazy to do that anyway. But reviews encourage me to write more ;P_


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